Hard Wired

by Len Vlahos

I’m unconscious for less than a minute. It’s an episode much more typical of my syncope than what happened yesterday, and given the weight of my father’s message, the fainting spell is both predictable and understandable. This fact helps convince my mother to stand down from red alert, that my passing out is in no way connected to the trauma suffered during my date with Shea, that we don’t need to rush out the door to a doctor or emergency room this very minute.

  I watch my father’s final message five more times.

  My mother sits with me through each viewing. She is unmoving, unflinching, her eyes dry and focused on the screen. I finally let the image of my father fade to black.

  I cannot believe this is the last message.

  The last time I will ever hear my father say something I have not heard him say before.

  The last time I will see his face making expressions I had never seen before.

  The last, the last, the last.

  It’s like watching him die all over again.

  It’s too much. I run to my room, slamming the door behind me.

  I expect my mother to follow me and knock, to try to calm me down, but she doesn’t. By now it’s seven a.m., so I text Leon.

  ME: Wake up.

  LEON: I’m up. How was the date?

  And then I launch into the longest series of texts I have ever sent. I tell Leon about my date with Shea, about passing out, about my five-hour memory loss, and most emphatically, about my father’s final message.

  My emotional state is somewhere between despondent and pissed off. I want to curl up in a ball and cry, and at the same time I want to punch something.

  When I finish, the screen on my phone is frozen in silence long enough that I wonder if Leon left to get dressed for school. Finally, I see him typing a response.

  LEON: Go to Mike.

  ME: What?

  LEON: Go talk to Mike about all of this. It’s above my pay grade. And besides, he and I could tell you the same thing, but you’ll give it more weight if it comes from him. Lol.

  Leon’s right about that.

  ME: My mom will want to drag me to the doctor first.

  LEON: Maybe. Maybe not. But if she does, then just go after.

  At that exact moment, Mom knocks on my door. “Sweetie? Are you okay?”

  I take a deep breath, gather myself, pull the door open.

  “Mom,” I start before she can say a word, “I want to go see Mike.”

  “I was just going to suggest the same thing.”

  That catches me off guard. “You were?”

  “We can go to the doctor later, or even tomorrow.”

  Okay, I think, that’s strange. “Really?”

  “Yes. I can only imagine how you feel.” Her voice catches before she adds, “I’m so sorry, Quinn.” I have no response. “C’mon,” she says, “I’ll drop you off on the way to work, and you can get yourself to school after. We’ll see how you’re feeling tonight. If you’re still doing okay, we’ll go to the doctor in the morning.”

  “What about Jack?” I ask.

  “Oh shoot!” Wait. Did my mother just forget about Jack? She looks over her shoulder, in the direction of Jack’s bedroom.

  “Honey, can you ride your bike to see Mike, and then ride to school?”

  “Don’t you need to call Mike to set up an appointment? Is he even there this early?”

  “I already did. He’s waiting for you.”

  This is definitely weird. It feels like both Leon and my mother are pushing me to see Mike. Why? And was Mike really up this early in the morning and at work?

  I’m not even one hundred percent sure I want to see Mike right now. But I don’t have a better idea, so I get dressed, grab my bike, and go.

  09

  Mike McDougal has been my therapist since right after my eighth birthday. He’s technically a pediatric psychiatrist, but Mom always just refers to him as a therapist, or as my “one-hundred-fifty-dollar-an-hour lifeline.”

  I started seeing him after an incident at school.

  A boy in my class named Andrew cut in front of me on the lunch line. Andrew was always doing that sort of thing; not because he wanted to be first, but because he wanted to provoke. He was a big-framed boy who didn’t seem to have any fear. Or maybe he displayed all that bluster to cover up an abundance of fear. Or maybe he was just a psychopath.

  If Andrew had cut in front of me a year earlier, I wouldn’t have done anything; I’d have just stood there and let him have his way. But after my dad died I’d become both intense and unpredictable. Some days I felt abject sadness, others I swam in a sea of uncontrollable rage. There was no rhyme or reason for how I felt moment to moment; it was like I’d lost any ability to process and handle normal human emotions.

  On the day Andrew cut the line, the prevailing winds were hot with anger.

  This was still four months before my father’s first video message, and I had not yet been indoctrinated into the school of “do unto others.” I didn’t even bother giving Andrew the benefit of the doubt; I never entertained the idea he might have cut by mistake.

  I shoved him.

  Andrew looked at me, confusion spreading across his face. No one, especially a little runt like me—I was small then, not filling out until ninth grade—questioned his dominance. The new me, the wild, unpredictable me, didn’t care.

  We stared at each other, like two cowboys from some old western. Then I kicked Andrew in the shin. Hard. Apparently hard enough to cause a hairline fracture. He was out of school for a week. So was I, but not for medical reasons; I had been suspended and directed to seek help for anger management.

  And that’s how I wound up with Dr. McDougal, who after a few sessions became Dr. Mike, and after that, just Mike.

  Mike’s office is a comfortable space with a desk, two plush chairs with an end table between them, and a chocolate brown couch and love seat. It feels more like a living room than an office.

  I find Mike behind his desk, reading glasses perched on his nose, his face buried in a book. He’s a burly man, broad in the shoulders, and over the past seven years growing broad in the stomach, too. His hair is white, though I think prematurely so. I don’t know how old Mike is, but he’s never seemed old to me.

  “Quinn!” Mike is always happy to see me. I’m usually happy to see him, too.

  “Hi, Mike,” I start, “my mom said she called?”

  “She did, she did. Come in, sit down.”

  This is a little test Mike does every time I enter. He watches to see which seat I will choose. I suppose the little choices we make in life say something important about us. Or at least Mike seems to think so. I don’t hesitate before flopping on the couch. I slump down low, using my entire body to express my current state of mind.

  “So . . . ,” Mike says as he comes out from behind his desk and drops down in one of the cushy chairs.

  “So . . . ,” I answer.

  And then I tell Mike everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours. Having already told Leon via text, you’d think it would be easier the second time around. It’s not. By the time I finish, I’m choking up.

  Mike leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and stares me down. This is his go-to move when he wants me to pay attention.

  “What?” I finally ask.

  “This is a big day for you, Quinn.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mike smiles at me and leans back in the chair, projecting a more casual aura. “It’s kind of like a graduation. Maybe your father is telling you you’re old enough to step into the world without the aid of the crutch he provides you.”

  “So you think he planned it this way?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But what if I’m not ready.”

  “Quinn,” he says softly, “you’ve been ready for longer than you know.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that, so I say nothing.

  “Here’s what I want you to do. Go home after school and watch all your father’s messag
es from start to finish. I want you to focus on what he says and see which of his thoughts resonate in your heart. I want you to explore your feelings. Can you do that?”

  I pause for a very long moment before nodding.

  “Good, good.” He leans forward again. “You can do this, Quinn, I know you can.”

  Then Mike ushers me out of the office before I can say another word. And just like that, I’m on my own.

  10

  School that day passes in a blur.

  Shea, someone tells me, is out sick. I know the truth. She’s not sick, she’s disgusted and embarrassed and hurt.

  This is the worst day, ever. I want to crawl in a hole and die.

  Leon, Jeremy, and Luke try to cheer me up at lunch.

  “C’mon, dude. It couldn’t have been that bad.”

  “She drove me home, all the way home, and I have no memory of it.” We’re at our usual table, and for some reason, I can’t shake the feeling that everyone else in the lunchroom is looking at me.

  “Maybe you didn’t say anything,” Luke suggests.

  “Maybe I tried to lick the rearview mirror.”

  “Is that something you think you’d do?” Luke’s expression is somewhere between amused and concerned.

  “No,” I mutter, “but why isn’t she here today? Why won’t she answer my texts?”

  Leon is unusually quiet. He’d tugged my elbow before we entered the lunchroom, pulling me aside.

  “How’d it go with Mike?” he’d asked

  “It was short.” Truth is, I didn’t want to talk about it. For some reason, it’s a lot easier to focus on Shea than on my dad’s last message and all that it means.

  “You know,” he says now, at the lunch table, “everything happens for a reason.”

  I look him dead in the eye.

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe.”

  I’m too freaked out and too tired for this conversation. I pick up my tray, my food barely touched.

  “I think I need fresh air,” I tell my friends. “I’ll see you guys later.” Then I do something I’ve never done before. I just walk out of school in the middle of the day. That more than anything is a clue to my state of mind.

  When I get home, Mom’s car isn’t in the driveway. I know the house will be empty, but I call out anyway.

  “Mom? Jack?”

  No answer.

  I skip my normal stop in the kitchen for a snack and head straight to my room. Mike’s words have stayed with me all day. “Watch all your father’s messages from start to finish.”

  My mom always moves the messages to the cloud after the first viewing—“So we’ll have them forever, Quinn”—which means I can watch them from my own computer.

  The files in the folder on the screen are labeled clearly. First Anniversary, Second Anniversary, and so on. I haven’t watched the earlier recordings in years. With the viewing of each new message, I would never again watch the old one; it became a weird sort of tradition for me. Besides, after living for a year with each recording, I had more or less committed them all to memory.

  The weather outside has turned gloomy. Thick gray clouds are hurling a torrent of rain on our street, the bulging droplets making plinking sounds as they hit my window. I haven’t turned on the lights, so the only illumination in the dim room is from the glow of the computer. I can barely make out the posters of NASA and football and Star Wars on the walls over my bed and desk. My books and comic books are vague shapes on sagging shelves. With the empty house and with the storm, the room has an eerie feel, like the start of a horror movie.

  I pick up my phone and text my mother.

  ME: Mom? Where are you?

  My phone chimes in response almost immediately, and I exhale a larger, longer breath than I knew I’d been holding in my lungs.

  MOM: I’m out with Jack. Feed yourself dinner. We’ll be home later.

  Short, sweet, and to the point. That’s Mom.

  ME: Where are you?

  This time there is no response. I wait five minutes and try again.

  ME: Mom?

  My phone doesn’t stir.

  Not sure what else to do, I double click First Anniversary and start to watch.

  It’s been seven years, but I still remember every word my father speaks, every tick of every muscle on his face.

  Hi, Quinn, it’s Daddy. There is a sadness in his eyes, but there’s something else, too. It’s a kind of excitement, like maybe he’s happy to be leaving these messages. Or maybe it’s just love. His surroundings look as they did in every message: The trees outside are lush with the teeming life of late spring; the light pouring in the bay window frames my dad, giving him a heavenly glow, while the lamp on his desk throws halogen warmth on his face; his guitar, which he’ll pick up in a few minutes, leans against the wall; a nearly finished jigsaw puzzle—the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel—is on a table adjacent to the desk; next to his computer is a small container of paper clips, a number of them having spilled over the top. That container—smoky-looking brown plastic with a magnet lining the inside of the circular opening, to keep the paper clips contained—now sits on the desk in my room. I involuntarily glance at it.

  It’s been one year to the day since I left you, and I want to tell you how sorry I am I had to leave.

  I let the recording play, mouthing Do unto others along with my father each time he says it. I feel a longing more intense than I have ever felt. This was where it all started, this was the prelude to all that would come: my changing behavior, the other messages, the last message.

  The recording ends, and the screen reverts back to the file folder. I double click Second Anniversary.

  Hi again, Quinn. It’s me, Daddy.

  Same tan khakis and blue shirt, same leaf-filled trees, same guitar, same mess by the same computer, same jigsaw—­

  Wait. What?

  How did I not notice this before?

  The jigsaw puzzle is different. It’s no longer the Sistine Chapel. It’s still nearly finished, just like in the first recording, but it’s a different image. Michelangelo has been replaced by Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. I watched this recording almost every day for a year, and I would swear on a stack of Bibles the puzzle was the same as in the first video. Wasn’t it?

  I don’t let the message finish. I double click Third Anniversary, and my eyes go immediately to the puzzle. It’s in the same state of near completion, but now it’s the March of Progress: the famous image of a monkey evolving into a man in progressive stages. It’s supposed to be a visual representation of Darwinian evolution. I open the first and second anniversary recordings, pausing each of them and arranging the windows so I can compare all three at the same time. Other than the puzzles, everything else in each scene is identical.

  What.

  The.

  Hell?

  Is this somehow connected to the memory loss I experienced yesterday? For a moment the idea terrifies me. But no, that doesn’t make sense. I’m seeing what I’m seeing.

  Aren’t I?

  It’s clear my father recorded all these messages on the same day, probably in one sitting. Why are the puzzles changing?

  Click. Click. Fourth Anniversary. The puzzle is of a photograph I don’t recognize. A man, maybe from the 1940s or 1950s, standing in front of some ancient computer. My pulse is starting to race.

  Click. Click. Fifth Anniversary. An illustration of a human brain with some kind of circuitry lying over it.

  Click. Click. Sixth Anniversary. A character from my dad’s favorite television show, Star Trek: The Next Generation. Mr. Data, I think; the puzzle still in the same state of near completion. My breathing is rapid and shallow, and I can feel my heartbeat. I can hear my heartbeat—thump, thump. It’s getting louder.

  THUMP THUMP!

  Click. Click. Seventh Anniversary. Pinocchio, from the old Disney cartoon. Pinocchio? The thumps become ear-splitting booms.

&nb
sp; BOOM BOOM! BOOM BOOM!

  My heartbeat is drowning out any other ambient noise.

  BOOM BOOM!

  It’s too much.

  BOOM BOOM!

  I pass out.

  11

  When I come to, I’m still seated at the desk, though now it’s night. The time on the computer says nine p.m., which means I’ve been out for hours, or at least, I don’t remember the last few hours. The house is utterly still. I poke my head into the hallway.

  “Mom? Are you home?” Nothing. “Jack?” Silence blankets the house like a fog. The darkness is starting to unnerve me, so I flip the light switch in my bedroom, but it doesn’t work. Either the power’s out or the light bulb has burned out. But the power can’t be out because the computer is still on.

  I go back to the desk, pick up my phone, and text my mother again.

  ME: Mom? Where are you?

  Nothing. I try again.

  ME: Mom?

  I’m starting to really lose my shit. I try Leon.

  ME: Dude . . . Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

  It’s a line from one of our favorite old movies, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. It’s become a kind of code for me and Leon that there’s some kind of trouble brewing. It usually means one of us is in the doghouse with our parents.

  LEON: It’s okay, Quinn. I promise, it’s okay. Just follow it all the way to the end.

  What is that supposed to mean?

  ME: Huh? Follow what?

  Silence.

  ME: Dude?

  More silence.

  ME: Leon?

  I try Jeremy, and Luke, even Shea. No one answers.

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  . . .

  Thirty-seven minutes later (according to the computer clock), I snap back to consciousness. My last memory was standing with the phone in my hand, texting. Now I’m sitting again and looking at my Mac. First Anniversary is playing. The sudden—or at least I think it’s sudden—increase in these weird and inexplicable gaps in my memory is bad. Really bad. Really, really, really, really bad.

  I try to dial 911, but my phone has stopped working. The battery is completely dead. For some reason, I can’t remember where I left my charger. We don’t have a landline, so I think about going to the neighbor’s house, but for some reason, I can’t remember their names.